Henry david thereaus essay on the duty of civil disobedience

Thoreau asserts that he does not want to quarrel or to feel superior to others. Thoreau asserts that government as an institution hinders the accomplishment of the work for which it was created.

He recalls the time when he was imprisoned for non-payment of taxes on his part. In the end, he again lays emphasis on respecting an individual. A state cannot be absolutely free and enlightened until the government recognizes the importance of an individual. He presents his own experiences as a model for how to relate to an unjust government: He asserts that the government itself becomes an obstacle between achieving its purpose, the purpose for which it was created.

This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible. The essay was printed with a new title called Civil Disobedience.

The one that is intended in this case is "relating to citizens and their interrelations with one another or with the state", and so civil disobedience means "disobedience to the state".

Individual conscience should rule instead, and civil government should confine itself to those matters suited to decision by majority rule.

A lifelong abolitionistThoreau delivered an impassioned speech which would later become Civil Disobedience injust months after leaving Walden Pond. He notes that democracy may not be the final stage in the process. This is not to say that you have an obligation to devote your life to fighting for justice, but you do have an obligation not to commit injustice and not to give injustice your practical support.

However, it is prone to be misused. Although this is an acceptable dictionary definition of the word civil, it is not what is intended here. Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient. As a machine, the government may not do a good job in producing justice.

It also condemns the Mexican-American war. Salt and issued in London in A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority; it is not even a minority then; but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight.

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison On Civil Disobedience is another common title. It exists for the sole purpose of ensuring individual freedom. There are thousands who are in opinion opposed to slavery and to the war, who yet in effect do nothing to put an end to them.

He was truly disgusted with the American government. If the alternative is to keep all just men in prison, or give up war and slavery, the State will not hesitate which to choose.

Unjust laws do not work for people, whether they are in majority or minority. It exists because the people have chosen it to execute their will, but it is susceptible to misuse. According to him, if the machine is producing injustice, citizens should work as a resistance to stop the machine.

In the progression from absolute monarchy to limited monarchy to democracy, Thoreau observes an evolution in government toward greater expression of the consent of the governed. But he felt we could and should insist on better.

The opponents of reform, he recognizes, are not faraway politicians but ordinary people who cooperate with the system.ON THE DUTY OF CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE By Henry David Thoreau Walden Economy When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which I had built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts, and earned my living by the labor of my hands only.

- Civil Disobedience and the Abusive Power of Government In response to the annexation of Texas in by the United States, Henry David Thoreau's wrote the essay, Civil Disobedience. Thoreau felt that this purely economic move by the United States expedited the.

Get ready to write your paper on Civil Disobedience with our suggested essay topics, sample essays, and more. CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE BY HENRY DAVID THOREAU Essay: “On the Duty of Civil Disobedience” Author: Henry David Thoreau, –62 First published: The original essay is in the public domain in the United States his chapter on the “Duty of Submission to Civil Government,”.

Thoreau's Civil Disobedience espouses the need to prioritize one's conscience over the dictates of laws. It criticizes American social institutions and policies, most prominently slavery and. One of Thoreau's most influential writings, it has been published separately many times (Walter Harding's The Variorum Civil Disobedience, for example, appeared in ), included in volumes of selections from Thoreau (among them the Modern Library Edition of Walden and Other Writings of Henry David Thoreau, edited by Brooks Atkinson), and translated into European and Asian languages.